kim said

Steph's Meme: The Six Word Memoir

Childhood friend and fabulous mom Steph from Conversations with Grace tagged me with this meme:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag more blogs with links if you want.

So many books, so little time.

I tag My Favorite Color Is Shiny, I Like Tomatoes but Not Tom Hanks, & Ant from Naptown.

Notes After Reading The Times Literary Supplement of 9/14

To Do:
* Read Moby-Dick via Daily Lit.  (One of the classics I somehow missed out on while shuffling among school districts)

* Download some "early" Duke Ellington.

* Check library for apocalyptic San Francisco sci-fi novel Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.

To Ponder:
* "If we are condemned to wander an imperfect world, (Clive) James suggests we have the power to improve our exile incrementally." --Adam Bresnick

* "(James) endorses that it was the English literary and cultural tradition above all that provided a safeguard against the  totalizing dreams that turned  European history into a nightmare  for much of the twentieth century." -- also A.B.

To Research:
* Sara and Gerald Murphy

* Film reviews and commentary by Paula Marantz Cohen after reading her take on Two Days In Paris, which compares Julie Delpy to a Henry James heroine.

A Rave Review for Jim Shepard's Book

"Ask a writer who their favorite living writer is. There's a good chance they'll throw out the name Jim Shepard. (The other correct answers are Alice Munro and/or Charles Baxter.)" Suzanne Kleid in the KQED Arts & Culture blog

Daisy Miller

I know this blog has been incredibly boring lately, but things should get very exciting soon! Stay tuned....

I happened to read Daisy Miller (Henry James) last night and upon reflection, I couldn't help but compare the title character to Britney Spears. We are Winterbourne and "society." Collectively and individually we should, as The Egalitarian Bookworm urges, look to ourselves and take some responsibility for telling a teenage Britney: If you're sexy enough, we'll buy your records. If you're controversial enough, we'll buy magazines that feature you. But don't get too sexy or too controversial (or too "fat") or you will suffer the consequences.

Book Report: Of Darkness and Light

The night before last I read one of Georges Simenon's Maigret novels, The Head of a Man, and then started Diary of a Provincial Lady. I'd previously read Simenon's Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (an NYRB classic), but never one of his detective mysteries. (They are a bit like Dashiell Hammett's books, only set in Paris). Simenon, who once said that "writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness," had that amazing ability to convey a great deal with the least number of words. (There is a really enjoyable piece on Simenon in the recent edition of Bookforum with lots more about the man and his copious writings.)

Diary of a Provincial Lady is a sweetly clever work set between the two world wars. The main character, the narrator of the diary, lives in the country with her husband, children, nanny, and servants where she tries to make the most of the boring routine of her days and her less-than-attentive husband. Something of a bohemian in her younger days, she feels out of touch with the fashionable intelligentsia and laments that she has more trouble discussing the latest popular book (Orlando) after she's read it than before. Some anecdotes on the author by her daughter here. Bloggers stuck in a rut would do well to keep a copy of Diary close at hand for proof positive that even the most dreary subjects can prove entertaining with the right tone. 

My First Time on Virgin

Because I lack even some of the most basic skills and general accoutrements of the well-traveled person, I feel I would be a real fraud if I called myself a jetsetter. Even though I've logged my share of miles flying between San Francisco and Los Angeles at least once a month for over two years--and that's not counting the stateside and International travel of the vacation variety--I'm still a messy, disorganized, exceedingly non-glamorous traveler, a regular Julia Larwood* of the friendly skies. I always get to the airport with barely a second to spare, dragging along multiple bags in various shapes, colors, and states of disrepair. If anything I look more like a bag lady than a world traveler. But this month something exciting is happening. I'm flying down to LAX on Virgin America instead of Southwest and I'll be writing an article on the experience. Virgin is ushering in a new era of domestic travel and, if not quite a return to the glamorous heyday of flight, at least they'll actually be serving something besides peanuts (and that's just one of many fine amenities). So in advance of this assignment, I'm going to try and morph into the great traveler I know I can be. Hey, maybe I'll even spring for a new suitcase and matching carry-on. We'll see...

*Sarah Cauldwell wrote four clever mysteries narrated by the ambiguous Professor Hilary Tamar. Julia Larwood is one of her characters.

On Vacation

Gavin and I are headed up to gold country for a little r&r this holiday weekend. In my luggage, along with the necessary staples, I've packed: 

Min Jin Lee's Free Food for Millionaires
Julian Fellowes' Snobs
J. Sheridan Le Fanu's The Wyvern Mystery
Chekhov's Longer Stories from the Last Decade
a Kimono-sleeved dress for lounging during the day

Have a lovely 4th of July!

Not Over the Moon about Prep, plus Special Topics

 

I read Prep: A Novel the other day after having read two other books set at private schools, Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Gentlemen and Players, within the last month.  I remember there being a lot of debate/discussion in the blogosphere over Prep when it came out but I didn't really pay much attention to it. Maybe it was the cover that turned me off. After reading it, I'm not sure what all the fuss was about. It seemed very Young Adult Novel to me--sort of a "beach read" (And after googling Sittenfeld just now to see what other bloggers thought, I find that at least one reader/writer I know agrees).

Sittenfeld definitely gets the insecure teen thrust into an alien environment, but I don't feel like I learned anything new or received any real benefit from reading it. In some ways the main character Lee reminded me of  Nick in the incomparably better (though perhaps longer than it needed to be) novel The Line of Beauty. Both are keen observers, take everything personally, and imbue all whom they meet with the most negative impulses and motives.

As for Special Topics, it was miles ahead creatively and great fun for a word lover, but I found it lacking in the character department. I guess I expected more after the initial charm began to wear off. I'll be anxious to read the author's next novel to see how she develops as a writer. I started The Moon and Sixpence yesterday. It feels so luxurious to read something this beautiful and elevating after Prep. It's like eating a soufflé that took two hours to make after having just scarfed down a Twix.

P.S. What do you think about publishers adding "a novel" to titles? In general it seems redundant and affected but there's also something 18th century about it that is nice for certain books.

To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation

Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Choose Your Own Adventure

I spent last night:

a) wandering the broken streets of downtown L.A. smoking gitanes and muttering snatches of metaphysical poetry to anyone who would listen.

b) drinking champagne, eating bonbons, and getting an in-room pedicure while reading Min Jin Lee's Free Food for Millionaires.

or

c) dining in a hotel sports bar and working on a website until 11pm, then falling asleep next to my laptop.